'Bucket List Bandit' suspect to stay in prison

In this photo provided by the Roland, Oklahoma Police Department, Michael Eugene Brewster is pictured in a booking photo dated Sept. 13, 2012. Brewster, a suspected cross-country bank robber who told one teller that he had cancer and "did not care what happens" was arrested in eastern Oklahoma after a traffic stop more than 1,000 miles away from his most recent heist, the FBI said Friday. (AP Photo/Roland, Oklahoma Police Department)ERIE TIMES-NEWS

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For the foreseeable future, a federal prison will be the home of a Florida man accused of holding up an Erie bank as the "Bucket List Bandit."

Also for the foreseeable future, the defendant, Michael E. Brewster, 54, will face prosecution only in Erie, as authorities review evidence that has made him a suspect in as many as nine bank robberies nationwide.

The FBI said the robber in all of those cases told bank tellers he was dying and did not care what happened to him.

With Brewster in custody, the FBI is expected to continue to sort through the other cases to decide where to charge Brewster next, said Jason Crouse, the agent in charge of the FBI office in Erie.

"All the mechanics need to be figured out," Crouse said.

Brewster did not object to staying in prison when he appeared in federal court in Erie on Thursday for his first court appearance here since the Sept. 10 robbery of $4,080 from the Huntington Bank at West 12th Street and Pittsburgh Avenue.

The FBI accused Brewster of threatening that he had a gun and telling a bank teller he had cancer. Someone later called the FBI in Erie and identified Brewster as the "Bucket List Bandit," according to court records. He is suspected in robberies in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois and Missouri.

Brewster, after the Erie robbery, had been in a federal prison in Oklahoma. U.S. marshals this week moved him to the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, in Youngstown, which houses federal prisoners. Brewster will remain there while his case proceeds in Erie.

Police in east-central Oklahoma arrested Brewster on Sept. 13 after he ran a stop sign in an area near the Arkansas line.

On Thursday, Brewster, last known to live in Pensacola, Fla., wore an orange jumpsuit with "Inmate" emblazoned on the back.

He said little during the minutes-long detention hearing, which U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Paradise Baxter convened to decide whether to hold him in prison pending his prosecution on one felony count of unarmed bank robbery.

A federal grand jury indicted him Tuesday.

Brewster calmly said, "Yes, ma'am," to Baxter when she asked him whether he understood the charge against him and whether he wanted to waive his right to a hearing.

Brewster offered no comments about his health, and Brewster's lawyer, Thomas Patton, an assistant federal public defender, declined to comment after the hearing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Piccinini said he did not know if Brewster had requested special medical care.